Rough Silk
by Renignition
Summary: The dark circles beneath my eyes are not just from lack of sleep but rather lack of happiness, lack of motivation, lack of care, lack of you. Grimmichi Abusive relationship. M for several reasons.


**It's 6/15 and you know what that means right**

**I'm working on Tossing and Turning chapter 4 and if I get my shit together it'll be up sometime in the future I swear**

They say if you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump right out. The frog will be burned, but eventually it heals and if it's lucky the scars fade.

However, put a frog in warm water and slowly turn it up to boiling, the frog will sit in the water until it dies.

We met partly because we had the same math class and mostly because we were that high school couple everyone wanted to put together.

You know the one, with the two people who seemed to be built for each other like two puzzle pieces that fit in a world of puzzle pieces that didn't?

In truth, I thought we were perfectly fitting puzzle pieces at first too.

The sex was, of course, fantastic, but the romance was even better.

I hadn't expected someone who was renowned for fighting off a bear unarmed in the middle of a school camping trip to be able to hold me like I was worth more than the gum on the bottom of his shoe.

To put it metaphorically, I was the happiest goddamn frog in the warmest, most comfortable water in all of existence.

The slow procession to boiling began shortly after graduation. It was summer, and we were sharing a skanky little apartment because we were both 20 and in love and kept wasting money on gas for stargazing park adventures and flowers for each other and cigarettes for the taxes.

I worked two jobs and he worked three. Between exhausted sips of coffee at breakfast and holding each other in bed on the weekends(I worked the graveyard shift at the local bar during the week), our time together turned from long notes of serenity to short, broken pieces of quick kisses and almost desperate physical contact. The sex turned from love making to almost animalistic, frantic and hurried and almost fearful, like we were afraid if we didn't get off with each other we would become overwhelmed by the world.

He almost puked the first time I hit him. I hadn't meant to, I swear. Something came over me, a white-hot rage that seared my blood and refused to cool until it saw my fist against his temple.

After that, after watching him stagger back like he had been shot, after he ran to the bathroom and locked himself in, the anger fled and all that was left was the emptiness.

When I was a kid, I thought I was an animal stuck in the form of a human, my fangs shoved up in my skull and my claws hiding in my fingers. The blue hair didn't help. I came up with a theory after getting the shit beat out of me in front of the principal-he pretended he didn't see-that if you had blue hair you either died or turned into a monster just like your tormentors.

Despite already hating myself at the ripe young age of nine, I did not want to die.

The teasing stopped in middle school but I couldn't control the tornado of fury whirling around in my stomach. I picked fights, dented lockers with my punches. Once I think I lashed out at my own mother. The worst part was I knew what I became. I didn't have anger management or any other disease. It was just me being a beast.

I began to control it senior year. Math class especially. It's kind of funny how five therapists and a trash can full of pills didn't work but orange hair and brown eyes did.

My life turned from breaking bones to making him laugh as many times as I could, to seeing his smile and the corners of his eyes turn up.

Ichigo Kurosaki was the sun.

We loved each other in ways that I like to imagine hadn't been defined by any dictionary or romance novel in the world. I wanted to die loving him because it was the only way I would die happy.

Of course, we moved in with each other after graduation because that's what you do when you intend to see someone for the majority of your day. Ironically enough, we ended up rarely catching glimpses of each other. My work shifts ended when his started and I grew experienced in the art of sending love through text messages.

It wasn't enough though. The monster needed more.

He was leaving for Wolves and Shadows, the shit bar that was his second job and my hand shot out and grabbed his shoulder.

I pulled him close and grinded against his jean-covered ass.

"Why don't you call in sick? You've been working like a dog and there's a bottle of wine in the fridge calling our name."

He pushed my hands off his hips.

"Not tonight Grimm, Stark wants me working till sunrise because Renji's on leave for a funeral." He pushes towards the door and I can't help it, I beat him there and slam my hands on the scratched wood, one on either side of his ears.

"I can't take this shit anymore Ichigo, I haven't had a real conversation with you about something other than surviving in weeks. Believe it or not, I _miss _you."

We kiss. Hard. I try to snake my hands up under his shirt but he shoves me away. I fall back like a bird that's been shot in the wing.

"Dammit Grimmjow, I have to work! Fuck, you know I want to do this more than anyone but not tonight. Just not tonight."

The monster rears its head and sharpens its teeth against my ribs. My vision tints red. Words fall from my tongue like suicide jumpers.

"What's so important about your goddamn work tonight? Have another date planned? Eating dinner with this Renji asshat?" I step forward and he steps back, effectively pinning him to the wall. I can't stop my damn mouth. I can tell he's close to tears, that if I stopped now we could fix it all and still have a good night. But the monster isn't ready to relinquish control.

"Or am I just unsatisfactory when I'm not working because I'm actually here, in this rathole that I share with the love of my life? _Are you even that?"_

Heat curls in my bicep, a flash in my vision, and he's holding his head and reeling to the left. My knuckles are warm and red.

Oh God.

He's banging on the bathroom door, begging me to open up. I have this mental image of him plastered to the peeling wood, trying to speak through the keyhole. My hands are shaking too badly to send a coherent text, and I hope Stark can decipher the jumble of letters I sent him as me calling in sick.

What had me spooked wasn't the fact that he hit me-though I'm not saying it had left me fit as a fiddle-it was the moment right before. Watching him reel back like a boxer in a match and the blind fear of someone I trusted so much caught me completely off balance.

I fell asleep in the bathtub. When I opened the door in the morning, he was curled up right outside the door like an overgrown puppy. Sighing, I lie down next to him and drape an arm over his shoulders.

"The world's too cruel already for us to be cruel to each other." His voice is hoarse and filled with sleep.

"Is that bottle of wine still intact?"

We have make up sex and spend the day with our legs tangled in the bed sheets, counting the cracks struck through the ceiling. It's nothing like before, but we weren't living the life we previously lived.

There's a little scratch on my temple from his knuckles, but it heals and the scar's almost unnoticeable.

I think it's all over.

And then, of course, it happens again.

Fast-forward a few months. We're both working three jobs while living off the bags beneath our eyes and the number of ribs we can count beneath our skin. There's almost no food, and Grimmjow forces me to eat all of it when there is any.

I haven't seen him eat for three days.

His cheekbones stick out like knives. I can't sleep because I have a new fear that he'll die if I close my eyes for too long.

After hours of begging and arguing, he finally takes a tentative bite out of a bagel and proceeds to devour it and three more. I almost can't hear him through the chunks of bread crammed in his mouth.

"I want you to quit your job at the bar."

My answer is immediate, one-worded, and 100 percent negative.

"No."

He clenches his teeth and steeples his fingers.

"Do it. I'm not arguing with you on this one."

I turn and begin to walk away.

"This is ridiculous. We're not arguing about it because it's just stupid."

"If you don't call in and quit right now I'm going to call your Dad and tell him how I fucked you on every flat surface in this apartment in excruciating detail."

Grimmjow's smirk is almost audible as I slowly turn. The only other thing that would have stopped me from leaving the room was if he had cut off my legs or stabbed me in the back.

The thought of my family learning that I was gay terrified me more than the monsters that lurked beneath my bed as a kid.

Three things flashed through my head, hit me like bricks.

One. The night after I realized I liked Grimmjow and how I spent most of it locked in my room dealing with one panic attack after another because Two; Dad did not approve of homosexuals despite what he said I saw his disapproving glances and the way he held Karin and Yuzu when he saw same sex couples at the park and Three; I'm pretty sure I trod all over Grimmjow's feet when we first kissed as I cried and begged him to not tell a soul.

I lunge for the phone in his outstretched hand and he deflects my desperate attack with almost comical ease for someone who was starving half an hour ago.

"Sit down. Don't try that again or I'll call him anyways." He slides his own phone across the table.

I remember countless sleepless nights, tossing and turning and considering hanging myself with my sheets because I was caught between hating myself and loving the way he wasn't afraid to put his arm over my shoulder and kiss me in public, how he wasn't at all ashamed to be seen with me.

"Call Stark and tell him to send you your last paycheck."

The phone is almost crushed in my white-knuckle grip. Stark sounds like he just woke up when he answers the phone.

"Ey, Ichigo. How's it goin' man?"

"I-I'm quitting. Can you please send me my last paycheck in the mail?"

I hang up before he can react, burying my face in my hands. Grimmjow slides over and places his elbows on my shoulders, putting a bit of his weight on top of me. He lowers his mouth so his breath hisses into my ear.

"That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

He bites down on my shoulder and I yell because it isn't a play bite(if such a thing exists), it's a predatory attack that feels like he aims to tear off a piece of my skin. I lunge away from him but his arms are a vice, crushing me and holding me still until he worries the skin to the point of blood.

It's sickening and I would probably be furious if I wasn't panicking so badly, my heart almost cracking my ribs with its frantic beats and my lungs unable to catch a proper breath. He lets go after an eternity, wiping his mouth and gently running his fingers over the mark he made. At this point, I don't know if he would kill me or not if I shoved him away so I let him do what he wants.

I don't even know if it's really him anymore.

**Ending it here, I'll write more of it later. Meanwhile working on some plotless mansex for you guys. **


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